Inside the Freaky World of Next-Gen Night Vision

ROANOKE, Virginia -- A pair of buildings on Plantation Drive sits just past the tractor-supply store, right in front of the barn belonging to the local women's college. From the street, the cream-colored structures don't look like much more than typical office buildings; only a wire fence distinguishes them from their neighbors. Inside, however, is a laboratory and fabrication facility where engineers produce one of the U.S. military's most important advantages over its foes: the ability to see in the dark, when others are all but blind.

Night vision technology — and these buildings — have been around for more than a half-century. The green-tinged view from inside the goggles is now yawningly familiar. But this ITT Corporation facility doesn't make the rudimentary night-vision gear found in kids' toys or sex tapes. Here, they design and build the military-grade gear. And it can peer further into the dark, with greater fidelity, and under darker conditions, than any civilian equipment. (Sorry, Paris.)

That's not all. The latest generation of ITT's night-vision gear, issued to a relative handful of American forces, comes with thermal sensors inside; that allows troops to detect the heat from an insurgent sniper, even when he's completely camouflaged. The generation after that — currently under development here — will send digital maps, mug shots and drone footage to that same night vision eyepiece. In other words, U.S. forces will be able to ambush, apprehend and identify suspected militants — without the target ever seeing what the hell just happened to him.

"People are freaked out that you're here," one ITT executive told me. "You're the first one."

Truth be told, the company didn't exactly open up the place to me, either; I was mostly confined to a lone conference room. But I was able to try out a prototype of their latest night-vision gear before many generals had the chance. And I learned about the mind-meltingly complex manufacturing process that enables troops to "own the night," as the military cliché goes. Here's what I saw.

Cleared Hot

Even in the blackest dark, there are still a few stray photons of light. Night vision works by capturing that light, and amplifying it. But the Hulk-green view provided by this "image intensification," or "i2," can only tell you so much. It can't tell you if there's someone hiding in the tall grass in front of you. It can't say which car in a parking lot full of them has just been driven. It can't find newly dug-up ground or a freshly-fired gun.

So U.S. forces supplement their i2 gear with thermal sensors, which pick up signs of heat. These new eyepieces build the sensors right in. The Enhanced Night Vision Goggles can spot hidden threats — and keep working even when i2 technology is "blinded" by a sudden flash of light.

In a specialized trailer outside the factory, ITT's Harry Buchanan shows how sensitive the thermal sensor is. He rubs his hands on the wall, then puts them back by his side. Through the eyepiece, I can still see his handprints. Then Buchanan takes his shoes off. Not only do his feet leave similar marks; his shoes continue to glow hot.

Ghosts in the Machine

The goggles' classic "image intensification" sensor is analog. The new thermal sensor is digital, which means it has a bit of latency. In other words, the amber-colored thermal image can lag behind the green i2 one, producing some freaky — almost spectral — effects. In this shot, Buchanan and I look into a TV screen, while ITT executive Erik Fox looks on. He moves his hand and head ever so slightly. But it's enough to throw the combined image off — and make it look like Fox is possessed.

For years, the Army asked for — and ITT tried to produce — an all-digital model, to get rid of the ghostly images. They could never get the digital i2 resolution right. "The technology is a lot harder than it seemed," Buchanan says. "It's hard to beat that little analog tube…. I think we're still another eight years away."

In the meantime, the Army has issued about 5,550 of the Enhanced Night Vision Goggles. (And yes, they're called "goggles," even though they only cover one eye; "monogoggle," military "monocle" and a single "goggle" all sounded too goofy to use.) Special forces units, like the Rangers, got 'em first in 2008. Other regular Army units received the rest, starting in 2009.

Now, ITT and three other firms are working on lighter-weight, cheaper-to-manufacture models. Each company could receive up to $260 million and the rights to build 16,720 systems.

So Sensitive

The thermal sensor doesn't just generate ghosts. Sometimes, it'll see stuff that was never there in the first place. The camera is so sensitive, it picks up the heat reflected off of a mirror, a window or (in this case) a television set.

Between the Lines

Toggle a switch on the goggles, and they go into "full thermal" mode. Everything that generates a heat signature lights up. Toggle it again, and they go into "overlay" mode, showing only the hottest items. Hit it a final time, and they'll only show the outline of what's radiating with thermal energy. That's the mode you see here, in this picture of me.

The thermal camera performs a different function than the i2 sensor, Buchanan says; the former is for "detection," while the latter handles up-close "identification." The outline mode allows the first job to be handled, without interfering in the second.

Head Shot

These goggles are an alpha test of ITT's future night-vision gear. (Obviously, the switch box dangling behind my right ear won't stay in the final version.) It essentially shoots footage of what the wearer sees — allowing a commander around the corner (or maybe even in the White House Situation Room) to look through his soldier's eye.

Broadcasting night vision comes with a price — namely, a sore neck. The early NVG models weighed about 14 ounces. These new ones (like the models with the thermal sensors built in), are a little under two pounds. That may not sound like much of a difference. Trust me, when you're carrying the things on your head, it's huge. Buchanan claims that, by moving the battery pack to the back of the helmet, the enhanced model is actually more comfortable than the old one. I'm not so sure.

Earlier gadget arrays could broadcast night vision, too. But they required snapping a camera onto NVG eyepiece. That not only had a habit of reducing the goggles' field of view. It wasn't exactly neck-friendly, either.

Caught!

The newer-than-new night vision gear won't just send out what a soldier sees in the dark. It'll also let him take in all sorts of new information in his eyepiece. Like this mug shot, for instance.

An 800 x 600 SVGA display — in essence, a tiny computer screen — is inside the goggles. Just about anything a soldier might see on his laptop or smartphone can go onto it: battlefield maps, buddies' locations, pictures of top insurgents, even drone footage. The difference is, a glowing iPhone will give a soldier's position away at night. These goggles won't.

For decades, the Army has tried to give its troops a wearable computer ensemble — one that pushed digital maps and soldiers' whereabouts to a monocle on the helmet.

One of the many, many problems with the system is that you'd need a second night vision eyepiece in order to move around in the dark. And covering both your eyes is rarely a good idea. Even on moonless nights, your peripheral vision is still feeding your brain information. Better to combine it all into a single gadget.

From Superman to Soldier

To make night-vision goggles, you start with one of those crystals from the Superman movies. Or perhaps it's a custom-crafted glass rod, surrounded by a hollow tube made of slightly different glass.

The combo is taken to the top of a tower inside the ITT facility, and heated up. As the glass begins to melt, it's "drawn" into thin fibers. Then the fibers are packed together into a hexagonal shape, drawn again — and packed once more.

Now, there are about 10 million fibers, or "cores," smushed into a cylinder and sliced into a disk the size of a quarter. The more cores, the greater the resolution of the image intensification gear. Think of these cores as the analog equivalent of pixels. Creating them from those Superman crystals takes 40 days.

It's one of 400 processes that ITT as to go through to make the night vision gear. The whole thing requires more than 1,150 manufacturing assembly operators, engineers, chemists, physicists, lab technicians, working in this 356,000 square-foot facility and a smaller one in West Springfield, Massachusetts. ITT builds their own semi-conductors here (they don't want to depend on a potential corporate competitor, or on a foreign government, for their key components). They coat those components with layers of cesium oxide so volatile and so fine, they're impossible to measure — getting close enough to take a look would introduce oxygen, which would cause the cesium coating to decompose.

The image intensifier has three main components. The first is a photo cathode. It works pretty much like a solar cell, turning photons of light into electrons. Those electrons are then transferred into an electrically-charged "micro channel plate" — that's the quarter-sized bundle of glass fibers, originally melted from those Superman crystals. The micro channel plate is basically a tiny amplifier; the electrons bounce around those rods, creating more along the way.

At the bottom of the rods, the electrons smash into a fiber-optic screen coated with the rare earth compound phosphor. The microscopic particles glow green when the electrons hit. Photons are created again. And that produces the classic night vision view.

Night vision's tell-tale green glow is everywhere today — from horror movies to all-too-real news reports from the battlefield. There was even a restaurant craze a few years back when patrons sat in the dark while NVG-equipped waiters brought out the food. But it's worth remembering that the process required to make these everyday gadgets is anything but commonplace.